
2025
Filmed over seven years, the documentary follows Valter Hugo Mãe as he writes his novel “A Desumanização”, across journeys through Iceland, Brazil, Portugal, Colombia, and Macau. A visual meditation on solitude, loss, and belonging, featuring appearances by cartoonist Laerte Coutinho and Icelandic composer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, mentor of bands such as Sigur Rós and Björk. The film is part of the project “The Meaning of Life”, which director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes has been developing for more than a decade: a series of nine features built as a kaleidoscope of contemporary figures, in which the filmmaker invites us to reflect on what makes us, as humans, unique beings.

Valter Hugo Mãe
Self

Laerte Coutinho
Self

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson
Self

Cien libros juntas

Adaptation.

Empties

The Ghost Writer

Barton Fink

Capote

Stranger Than Fiction

The Reader

Secret Window

Fahrenheit 451

Misery

American Fiction

The Great Beauty

Macário

No Defense

Love in the Walls

Torre 1

In Their Own Words: The Women of Kurokawa

The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson